Stephen Grant Corn Exchange, 25/10/08
Stephen Grant is a man who definitely follows the mantra “first the worst, second the best” – in fact, his Brighton festival show for this year was entirely focussed on proving it. I’d seen Stephen before as the compere of Komedia’s Krater Comedy Club, so I was curious as to how he’d cope with being the star of the show.
The only time I’d been to the Brighton Comedy Festival before was for the brilliantly strange Ross Noble, and I have to say Stephen’s show didn’t quite match up, but he would probably be pleased to hear he was a close second.
The big advantage of seeing a local comedian is that his Brighton jokes were spot on. The audience were highly amused but not at all surprised to learn that there are twice as many Jedis as Muslims in our city!
His crowd interaction wasn’t brilliant (perhaps there were simply no weirdos sat at the front), but he got the audience on side with his endearing anecdotes about always being the bridesmaid, never the bride.
Luckily, Grant avoided becoming too pitiful by declaring that he had come to terms with it and was even quite proud of his almost-achievements… although he did still seem slightly bitter about missing out on a ‘Top Gear’ presenting job because he was considered too similar to Richard Hammond. Better get back to repeating that mantra…
